


To A T

by Anna_Hopkins



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gen, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Plot Bunny, Riddle at Hogwarts Era, Time Travel, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: Prompt fill for striga:Tom Riddle just got a T. He doesn't get Ts. Dumbledore is an arsehole and keeps saying that the test was inadequate. Tom Riddle is close to killing this man right here and there because with that T he won't be Prefect and if he isn't Prefect he won't be Head Boy and if he isn't Head Boy how will people respect him beyond his blood and muggle surname and Professor Dumbledore, sir (WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT) are there any alternatives to my raising my mark? Dumbledore thinks about it and points to really-bad-at-potions gryffindor -- tutor Harry Potter might you, Tom, it's OWLS in a few weeks.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 14
Kudos: 198
Collections: Tomarrymort Discord Prompt Fills





	To A T

**Author's Note:**

> Of all things to discover in my WIP drive - this fully-formed chapter! It has languished for too long. ♥

Tom Riddle's fifth year was going swimmingly, and he wasn't about to pretend he was anything other than pleased. Slughorn had been hinting all week about making him a sixth-year Prefect, which everyone knew meant Head Boy the year after; the Yule Ball he'd attended at Malfoy Manor had put his name into the minds of the upper class; and he was  _ this  _ close to a breakthrough in hunting down his heritage, thanks to a borrowed tome from the library of that same manor. Carried on the wave of that joy, that anticipation, it was as though nothing could possibly stand between him and Himself --

Then a gaudy-sleeved hand returned his latest Transfiguration essay face-down, and Tom felt all that pleasure drop out from under him in an instant.

  1. There was a T on the top of Tom's essay, and it wasn't the one in his name.



He blinked, disbelieving, at the purple ink (ugh) marring his neat black copperplate.  _ Dumbledore had given him a T. _

He can't bring this up until after class, or else risk broadcasting the grade to his peers (those swine) and thereby the school; and in the meantime the T will  _ still be there _ \--  _ marring  _ his grade, marring his perfect image, no,  _ no, _ he will not  _ stand  _ for this! Dumbledore has it out for him, that much is obvious, because this is a  _ perfect  _ essay in every way; Tom is close to killing the man  _ tonight  _ because with a T he'll lose Prefect and without Prefect he can't be Head Boy and if he isn't Head Boy how can he advance  _ any  _ of his goals or be believed when he claims the heirship of Salazar Slytherin and -- 

"Professor Dumbledore, sir," he inquired softly after class,  _ what the FUCK do you want --  _ "regarding the assignment handed back today; are there any opportunities to raise my mark?" And the bastard had the  _ gall  _ to stand there and pretend to think about it, as if he didn't have some plan for Tom in mind already -- and he could only hope it wasn't the sort his Housemates had been on about in their lewd magazines lately, because that might be the one thing Tom wouldn't do for a better grade --

"Yes, I do believe there are," the wizard considered, nodding. "If you will wait for me in my office a moment?"

_ Sweet Salazar,  _ Tom blanched,  _ he isn't implying --? _ But contrary to what he thought he  _ still  _ went and waited in the office, mind awhirl with nightmarish visions of what might await him in several minutes;  _ or call the Basilisk and kill him,  _ there was always that option --

Tom was privately very relieved when the door opened to reveal not a leering Transfiguration professor but an unremarkable Gryffindor boy (there's no way the old goat would molest his own House, he thinks, unwilling to consider the alternative) who immediately averted his gaze, and Dumbledore behind him, closing the door.

"This is Harry, one of my Gryffindors," Dumbledore explains patiently to Tom, as if it isn't obvious from the boy's robes what House he is in. "He has recently fallen a bit behind his peers, as I am sure he can explain, and I find myself unable to connect him with any of the tutors within his House..." Tom began to tune out the old man's drivel, getting the gist of it --  _ won't you assist me in my Gryffindor favoritism, Tom, or else I'll keep holding my academic blackmail over your head _ \-- and barely managed to keep the anger off his face as he agreed to tutor one Harry Potter through OWL season, schedule to be determined amongst them now.

He was only slightly mollified by the truly  _ icy  _ glare Harry sent at the garish robes departing the office, evidence that Tom wasn't the only one who can't stand the man; curious that it was a student from his favorite House that proved it. Tom sighed internally, compartmentalizing his rage into a corner of his mind.

"Tom Riddle," he offered, holding up his hand for the boy to shake. Harry's hand was much drier than most peoples' after being introduced to him for the first time, and distinctly cool to the touch. His expression was equally polite, though the Gryffindor had averted his gaze.

"Harry Potter," he spoke quietly; and something about his voice caught at the edges of Tom's perception like a breeze. A lesser wizard might have shivered; Tom smiled brighter, intensely curious, even as the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

"I am...sorry that Dumbledore did not give you the opportunity to decline. I admit I am quite...slow on the uptake for Transfiguration." There it was again: that strange, subtle  _ accent _ , if he could call it that, in Harry's speech. Tom tried and failed to place it, utterly perturbed, but kept a blank face. "Dumbledore has been after me to work on my...spellwork, lately. Particularly in Vanishing and...Switching."

They arranged to meet after dinner in an empty classroom Tom sometimes practiced in, on the third floor. All through dinner, Tom puzzled over the strange quality to the other boy's voice. His speech was stilted, but only occasionally --  _ on words beginning with S.  _ Did he have a  _ lisp? _ But no, that couldn't be; he didn't have the same issue in the middle of words. There was something more to it, and Tom had to know what.

Harry was waiting for him in the third-floor corridor, leaning against the wall with an apple in hand. Tom fingered the apple in his own pocket, amused by the symmetry. In the low lighting of the corridors near curfew, the Gryffindor's face caught the shadows more readily; Tom saw a gauntness in his cheeks that would have been out-of-place for most of his House, but was oddly fitting on Harry, who -- now that he looked -- was rather on the leaner side in general.

He crept down the hall without a sound. Harry seemed to be staring at the floor; he tossed the apple up into the air, and Tom watched it turn several colors in the few-second span that it was out of his grasp.

Harry hadn't used a wand.

Tom purposely made his footfalls louder now as he approached their meeting point. Harry returned the apple to his pocket without looking at it, and turned his polite gaze briefly onto Tom's before resettling it on the wall. The gesture was deferential, shy, but Tom had caught the fire in the boy's eyes in the same moment: it was a front. It had to be.

Curious Harry Potter, with his wandless magic and his false faces and his hatred for Dumbledore barely hidden beneath the thin veneer of politeness. "I confess I am surprised not to have met you earlier in the year," Tom admitted. "I'm guessing you transferred in for OWL year?"

Harry nodded, smiling sadly, glancing at him and away again. "I did, yes. I try not to...stand out."

It wasn't until they began practicing the spellwork Harry had mentioned earlier -- Vanishing and Switching spells -- that Tom really saw how much effort was going into that 'not standing out' idea. Harry was  _ talented,  _ and he was intentionally playing down those talents.

Nor was this the only sort of 'standing out' he was avoiding: Tom had looked for him in the Great Hall and actually  _ had trouble _ locating him at the Gryffindor table. Now that Tom was aware of him, though, he couldn't  _ not  _ be, no matter how well the other boy seemed to disappear into a crowd, to become unremarkable on a moment's notice. The glimpses behind-the-curtain that Tom had gotten in Harry's few unguarded moments so far were the only indication that he could be  _ more, _ that he  _ was  _ more; and to think that before then, they had never met. For all Tom had seen of him before Dumbledore brought them together that same day, Harry Potter might have emerged from a rift in time and space only seconds before he walked into Dumbledore's office.

He would wait, though, to confront Harry about it. They arranged to meet again the following day, after the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch match, and Tom watched Harry leave, pondering the strange chills he still got in the other boy's presence.

Harry secluded himself among the throngs of red- and gold-clad students in the Quidditch stands, thumbing absently over the spherical pendant that hung on a long gold chain around his neck. Hermione's broken Time-Turner still tingled with threads of magic when he touched it, though it had melted together in transit.

To think, he'd made almost all of fifth year without having to interact with Riddle --  _ had actually managed to hide from Riddle  _ \-- and then Dumbledore had fabricated an excuse to put them together in the same room, just as the year was ending. It was clearly his way of saying  _ get on with it, _ except the future-Headmaster had  _ no idea _ what 'it' was supposed to be.

It was obvious the man had no longer been interested in waiting a month ago, he'd hinted as much in their private meetings, but Harry had insisted:  _ my orders from your future self have to be followed in a specific time frame. _

Never mind that no such orders actually existed.

Never mind that, in reality, Harry had stolen Hermione's Time-Turner during the end of their third year and hidden it away while they recovered in the Hospital Wing, and successfully hidden it for all of Fourth Year; and that, after the end of the Triwizard Tournament and the events of Voldemort's resurrection, Harry had simply Turned away from King's Cross Station on the 'years' setting rather than the 'hours', until the trinket got too hot and gave up at 1942.

It was a small comfort that his trunk and satchel had traveled with him, though he'd let Hedwig fly home instead of ride the train. Wherever she was, Harry hoped she would be happy.

Because he'd decided, before he even left, that he was never Turning back.

The crowds were beginning to disperse from the stands now; the Quidditch match had ended. Ravenclaw's Seeker had caught the Snitch, apparently, sometime in the middle of Harry's musings. He made his way back into the castle, still wondering what the summer ahead had in store for him, if Dumbledore's goodwill was running out.

He'd acquired sanctuary at Hogsmeade over the summer by appealing to the Professor's (it was odd not to call him Headmaster, back then) desire for knowledge of the future. Harry answered a flurry of questions about a Dark wizard called Grindelwald from an increasingly flustered Dumbledore before his offhand comment that 'Grindelwald is nothing compared to what I've had to deal with' led to an abbreviated explanation of  _ Voldemort _ , a.k.a. one Tom Marvolo Riddle that the Headmaster already distrusted and suspected of seeking a following.

On the spot, Harry had made up a plot: that  _ his  _ Dumbledore had sent him back here with secret orders to 'stop Voldemort', that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone, even himself, what they were or else risk the timeline, and that he had promised Harry his older self would help him. "I didn't really have time to ask questions about that part, sir," Harry offered bashfully, "the Time-Turner was already turning."

All of it had bought him nine and a half months before the bastard's incessant urge to be 'involved' somehow overcame his older self's dire warning of the need for secrecy, and now Harry had to hide even  _ harder _ in order to keep Riddle's attention elsewhere. With them in close quarters, it was only a matter of time before Riddle saw through him entirely.

He regulated his breathing down to something slow and steady as he made his way to the third-floor corridor and the classroom where, one day, Fluffy would guard the Philosopher's Stone. Where, right now, Riddle waited for him to practice spells Harry had mastered on the first try months ago. Where Harry would be exposed, yet again, to the inexplicable desire to drop his facade entirely, every time Riddle stared curiously out the corner of his eye at him.

"Potter," Riddle greeted at the door with a smile. "You're here early. I was just setting up a few targets for us to Vanish and Switch."

"Evening, Riddle," Harry supplied, peering at the shapes folded out of paper and strewn about the room. "Ravenclaw caught the... Snitch, earlier than expected. I figured I could... spare you a later night if I... showed up now." That wasn't really true; he hadn't thought anything of the time when he walked back from the stands. It was a good excuse, though, and it seemed to please Riddle.

"You can call me Tom, if you like," the young Dark Lord suggested to him, moving to clasp a hand on Harry's shoulder.

Harry flinched before he could suppress the urge. His cheeks heated at the slip. "Er, call me Harry then, too, I guess. Tom."

Riddle -- Tom -- nodded agreeably, stepping back. He'd gotten rather close while Harry wasn't paying attention. "All right, Harry. Shall we begin?"


End file.
